Join Tim Vandehey & Annie Greer, authors of the humor book, The Chimp Who Loved Me, as they virtually tour the blogosphere April 4 – 29 2011 on their first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About Tim Vandehey & Annie Greer

Annie Greer is a certified veterinary chiropractioner, radio host, animal behaviorist, farmer’s wife and AKC Canine Good Citizen evaluator who, with her veterinarian husband, Kent, runs three animal clinics and a 40-acre farm in Apopka, Florida.

Tim Vandehey is a journalist, ghostwriter and book collaborator who has written more than 35 books since 2004 in the sports, self-help, memoir, spiritual, financial, business, and healthcare genres. His recent published co-authored works include Blindsided (with Jim Cole, St. Martin’s Press, 2010), Running on Faith (with Jason Lester, HarperOne, 2010), Produced by Faith (with DeVon Franklin, Simon & Schuster, 2011), and I’m Here to Win! (with Chris McCormack, Center Street, 2011). Tim lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with his wife and two daughters.

About The Chimp Who Loved Me

The Chimp Who Loved Me is a collection of true stories from the life and times of Annie Greer, a veterinary chiropractitioner, animal healer, radio host, speaker, farmer’s wife and all-around magnet for bizarre animal behavior. When Annie and Tim Vandehey, a professional writer, met in 2006 and began talking about Annie’s endless trove of strange and pants-wettingly funny tales about drill sergeant sheep and insane veterinary clinic customers, a book was born.

Infused with Annie’s trademark dry English wit and Tim’s storytelling panache, The Chimp Who Loved Me is a sort of twisted love child of Dave Barry, David Sedaris and James Herriot ofAll Things Bright and Beautiful fame. If you’re sick of the treacly sweetness of animal books like Marley and Me or Dewey and crave twisted tales of sex, poop, pee and death, where apes throw donuts at chefs during dinner parties and stoned veterinary students dispense bizarre advice to puzzled dog show contestants, then you won’t be able to put The Chimp Who Loved Me down…until it hits you in the nose because you’re reading in bed, silly.

Read an Excerpt!

Another favorite was Simon the flying squirrel. He was always happy to come out and be held and he would often shoot down someone’s shirt and tickle them until they were giggling helplessly. These energetic bundles of cuteness are actually regarded as pests in this area of the country, as they live in attics and cause untold damage by burrowing into insulation and the like. Not this young squirrel. He excelled in bringing a smile to the sternest of faces. He would glide up to 20 feet from visitor to visitor using the remarkable flap of skin stretched between his extended forepaws and rear legs. It was a beautiful sight.
Apparently, Simon was too popular for his own good. One day he was nowhere to be found. Normally, this gregarious rodent was charming the socks off (and thankfully, the money out of) our guests, but he had apparently vanished. By chance I struck up conversation with a visitor to the zoo. He seemed anxious and I wondered if something had happened on the facility. Then my eye…let me clarify something here and now. I’m a happily married woman. I don’t make a habit of openly surveying the lumps in other men’s pants. But I couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of…activity…in this gent’s pants. It looked distinctly as though something was squirming around, wildly looking for a path to escape. I suspected that Simon had been squirrel-napped.
It’s not often in this life that one has the chance to ask questions that truly have the potential to turn every head in the room. Most of us will never be presented with the opportunity to utter such breathless phrases as, “And then you strangled him with his necktie, didn’t you?” or “What was the intern’s name, Mr. President?” This was one of those moments, maybe the only one I would ever have. I seized it.
Calmly and with all the irony I could muster, I said, “Pardon me, but do you have my squirrel in your pants?” Looking back I could have got an entirely unwelcome reply, but actually the real one wasn’t much better. The man got a look on his face like a 16-year-old caught sneaking in at 3 a.m. “A squirrel?” he said.
The innocent act wasn’t going to work with me. I was going to crack him like an egg. “Yes,” I said. “Why is he there?”
“Because he seems to like it in there.”
I had no reply to that. The man blushed and fished Simon out of his pants, and we put our prize flyer back in his large housing area, from then on padlocking the door and only allowing closely supervised handlings. I was just grateful that Simon hadn’t panicked at being trapped in the guy’s boxer shorts. The publicity generated by the headline, “Man receives vasectomy from live squirrel,” probably wouldn’t have done much for business.